PROVIDENCE, R.I. - On Friday, Nov. 30 the Columbia men's swimming and diving team kicked-off the first day of the inaugural Brown Invitational. The three-day meet began with the morning preliminaries, and the 500 free was the first event for the Lions. Dominik Koll and Alex Mango earned spots in the B finals with a 15th-place time of 4:38.69 for Koll and a 16th-place time of 4:38.91 for Mango.

Columbia posted strong showings in the 50 free trials led by Stanley Wong, who swam a championship finals qualifying time of 20.86 for 6th place. Omar Arafa finished 13th overall with a time of 21.15 to enter the B finals field.

The men's diving team saw stellar performances from Micha Rembrandt and Jason Collazo, who both placed in the championship finals. Rembrandt tallied 309.5 points for third place and Collazo came in seventh with 273.05 points.

The finals session started well for Columbia, beginning with a fifth-place finish in the 200 free relay. Wong, Daniel Gosek, Alex Ngan, and Philipp Gaissert combined for a time of 1:23.10. Wong also went on to finish an impressive seventh in the championship finals of the 50 free at 20.96.

Koll returned in the B finals of the 500 free to capture the win for a 9th place overall finish time of 4:31.87, the fifth fastest time of the day. He was joined by teammates Arafa, Wong, and David Jakl in the 400 medley relay for another solid performance. The A squad placed seventh overall with a time of 3:24.10, just ahead of teammates Jared Namba, Matthew Swallow, Kevin Quinn, and Gaissertt who placed eighth with a time of 3:34.57.

The Lions finished the day with a total of 151 team points and sit in fourth place heading into day two tomorrow. Preliminaries will start at 11 a.m., with finals beginning at 6 p.m. Live results will be available through the Active Network's Meet Mobile application available as a free download from either iTunes or Google Play. The app provides fans with the ability to view real-time results and splits, as well as heat sheets, final results, and team scores.